Building a Bike – Selecting a Frame

OK, to build a bike the most obvious part you’ll need is – in my eyes – the frame.

I’ve spent quite some time on the internet looking at cross frames. There was one brand that kept popping up. A Belgian company called Ridley which makes some pretty fine bikes (used amongst others by the Belgian Lotto Bellisol pro team). They had some fine cross frames which was also recommended around the internet, so I narrowed my search down to a Ridley X-bow and a Guerciotti Lyra, mostly because it was cheap(ish) and asked the clever people of feltet (a danish site about everything cycling related, with a superb forum filled with friendly and knowingly cycling aficionados) about their oppinion. Their suggestion was to go with the Ridley frame, and so I did.

However, during my research I found out that a new 2013 model of the X-bow frame was to be released sometime later in 2012.

Here is the 2012 frame

And here is the 2013 frame

On the one hand I was eager to get my “build a bike” project started. On the other hand the 2013 frame was just sooo much prettier. I mean, just look at it! Black instead of white, and then there’s the rainbow stripes. No they have no practical useage, no I will not become a world champion by riding on a bike with rainbow stripes, yes I am familiar with rule 16 but still, they just look so damn fine on that bike.

So…I decided to wait. I had contacted the shop bike-zone.dk where I intended to buy the frame, and was promised that when the owner heard anything about availability of the new 2013 frame, he would contact me. This was late May and so I waited impatiently…until last week where I got a message from bike-zone that the frame was in stock now!

So I ordered, My height is 179 cm and my inseam is 81 cm which converts to a medium X-bow frame. And then I just had to wait for the postman to show up…but that is the subject of another post.